England really are shit

Walker - crap
Hart - lucky not to give pen away
Milner - very poor
Lambert - not good enough
Young - crap
Wilshere - greedy
Walcott - scared to take an old man on

Hodgson - rubbish

Nothing about us whatsoever, no urgency and not really sure what game are we are trying to play under Hodgson. 

Lambert is not a hold up striker, simple as. Young and Cleverley? Hardly game changers. Cahill was all over the place tonight as well. Awful game.

I tend to not get the time (or make the time) to watch England play much, but stuck this out. I want us to get to Brazil but we'd only get embarrassed there.

As Didi said, players get picked on reputation, not merit.

I thought the England performance tonight was absolutely perfect.  We played with little incision, nothing in the final third, wasteful in midfield and a wobbly defence which was fortunately able to withstand an unusually sub-par performance from the Ukranian front line.  It's precisely the sort of performance that should make every single football person in the land, from the occasional armchair supporter up to the deputy in charge of the FA, look at that idiot Dyke and say, "Go on then Greg, tell us precisely how England are going to win the World Cup in 2022.  We're dying to know!"  Because, short of FIFA backing down on their Qatar stance and handing the competition over to England to host, and then every nation who is better than, say, San Marino bailing out in disgust, I really can't see how it's going to happen.

It's telling that our best player by a mile was Steven Gerrard.  Lampard had a quiet game and Milner was our third best player, despite not doing very much.  It's also telling that half the midfield aren't even regular starters for their respective clubs.  We are so reliant on Walcott and Wilshere to be on form it's scary, because Young and Cleverley are really nowhere near them.  And even worse, we're relying solely on a 30-something striker who was a sub for Stockport County not long ago because, for some strange reason, we STILL won't play Defoe or Crouch despite their records.

So in all, a perfect performance.  Perfect for sounding the alarm bells very loudly to Dyke, because he's now got to figure out how the hell he can make good on his assertion when he hasn't got a billionaire next to him to go out and spend his way out of bother.

Jordan wrote:Cahill was all over the place tonight as well. Awful game.

Sorry Jordan i'm not having that, Cahill had an excellent game and was MOM in my opinion.
Admittedly England were poor last night (especially 2nd half), but what exactly did Hart have to do to keep us in it.....nothing. We had a scratch team out, played too defensively but still came away with a deserved draw that puts us top of the group with 2 home games to play.

As regards player performances, I thought Walker and Cole struggled but not having any cover didn't help their causes.
Wilshire might has well have stayed at home, absolutely awful performance imo.....people need to stop building this lad up, trying to make him out to be the next world beater....he isn't and never will be.
Milner and Walcott frustrated once again, as they failed to produce anything of note.
Lampard and Gerrard sat too deep in the 2nd half which allowed Ukraine to keep coming at us. The only time Lampard got forward (92nd minute), he nearly scored.
Lambert, could and probably should have held it up a lot better when he had the chance but lumping aimless balls upto him or balls into the corners definately didn't help him. Playing as a lone striker is never easy, so my question would be....would any of the other strikers have done any better on their own?.....imo, probably not!

All that said, if we'd have been more adventurous and attacked alot/abit more and lost 1-0, what would everyones reaction have been then? 
I pretty much guarantee, the players and management would have been slated to high heaven for not being abit/alot more conservative knowing full well we only needed a draw to top the group going into the last 2 games. I personally can't believe how much shit they're getting over this result/performance, as we'd have settled for it before the game.
We've put ourselves in a great position with 2 home games left now, if we don't qualify from here then we'll definitely only have ourselves to blame.

COME ON ENGLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

leopold wrote:look at that idiot Dyke and say, "Go on then Greg, tell us precisely how England are going to win the World Cup in 2022.  We're dying to know!"  Because, short of FIFA backing down on their Qatar stance and handing the competition over to England to host, and then every nation who is better than, say, San Marino bailing out in disgust, I really can't see how it's going to happen.

So in all, a perfect performance.  Perfect for sounding the alarm bells very loudly to Dyke, because he's now got to figure out how the hell he can make good on his assertion when he hasn't got a billionaire next to him to go out and spend his way out of bother.

Leo,

Dyke didn't say England ARE going to win the World Cup in 2022, he said that was the target. Dyke was explaining that if the FA, and the Premier League don't do something now to change then we have no chance. However, he is looking to make changes and upon these changes the target will be to win the 2022 World Cup - if we don't have a target, what are we working towards? 

I completely agree with him, lots of changes do need to be made if we're going to have any chance. But in no way did he say England are going to win the World Cup in 2022.

Okay, so maybe that was based on a sensationalist headline I read around the time he made his statement.  But my point still stands:  Nobody with half a brain would look at our current set-up and give us eight and a half years to have such a lofty target.  Nobody.

Because let's think about this for a second:  If we want to look to hitting the last four in the World Cup in 2022, we need to be bedding in a new team in the Euros in 2016.  But is anyone aware of any potentially world class players coming through the ranks?  So we'd need to implement a better training system, invest more money in nurturing the talent and bringing it into the national team in less than three years.  Possible?  Yeah, if we were starting from where the French are at.  Or we send all our kids off to Spain or Germany.

No, the changes Dyke proposes may be able to start producing talented kids who'll be ready by 2020 at best, and that team won't be ready for a World Cup in 2022.  And that's assuming he has a brilliant plan which can be executed to perfection.

His target should be more realistic.  What it should be is this:  Spain has a population which is about 40% of what ours is, and they can put out a team of world class players every tournament.  With potentially 8 million young lads at our disposal, we really ought to be able to find at least as many.  THAT should be our target, to produce a team that can compete at that level.  And it's a target that is much more achievable.  Once we're producing world class players, THEN we can think about winning tournaments.

Sorry for the huge rant, it's a subject close to my heart.  I help manage a youth team and there's some really good players on it, but I can't help bring them on because the club can't afford to send me on the courses and I can't afford to pay for it out of my own pocket.  I'm one of the many thousand well meaning dads with armchair knowledge who are already willing to use their free time to do what they can - imagine if all us dads were capable coaches, doing it for free?  How much better would the youth set-up be with just this one change?  And all it requires is for the FA to remove the onerous charges they levy on everything they offer to grass-roots clubs.

personally being from north of the border yes England are shite, with a capital S H I T E.

Scotland on the other hand ....... erm, well at least we won away  

Seriously though, the English national team is suffering what has happened to the Scottish domestic game after Rangers bought their 10 consecutive titles with paying ridiculous money to foreign players.  It affected the National team first (not got close to qualifying to a tournament since France 98) and then the domestic game.

England are now suffering the National drop which is obvious (to me anyway) because there are no good youngsters coming through.  There is no youth football in the UK now, all the academy's are full of foreigners too.

Unless we scrap the lot and start again like Germany and Spain did a decade ago it will only get worse.  St.Georges is a white elephant if the domestic clubs do not embrace local talent.

Remembering what Ferdinand said the other day then comes into this too.
We need to stop the amount of foreign players coming to play in England ASAP then....the FA/PL need to change their quota policy for games. The more English players that are trained/managed and brought on from youth level (therefore made available), can only benefit England in the long term.

Sorry for the same kinda post blisterin, was writing as you posted.

Why can't we copy Spain and let our reserve teams play in the Championship?

It should raise the standard in the Championship and let our lads play more games in a proper competitive environment. We can have a clause that they must have at least 6 home grown players and they can't play in the cups.

Blistering and Shaken, you are both completely correct:  The sheer number of foreign players in our league is killing us off.

Unfortunately, the long term fix requires some short term pain and I don't see anyone who'd be willing to take the hit.  The FA won't be able to wring huge sacks of money from the TV rights to the PL, because their cash cow has been compromised thanks to the reduction in world class foreign imports.  Clubs who use money to win trophies (and they all do, even us) will suddenly have to sell expensive assets at cut prices, thus levelling the playing field a whole lot and therefore cutting their funds.  We'd even see a drop in our UEFA coefficient, which means fewer teams in Europe and the requisite drop in income into the game.

The whole game, from the FA downwards, is governed by money and greed.  None of these people are going to take less money for the good of the game.  None of them.

But then what do we expect in a country where the attitude to the long term future is that it's someone else's problem?

When clubs can cite exceptional circumstances to get around the visa rules, then we are only adding to the problem.

Exceptional circumstances really should be exceptional. Willian hasn't played 75% of Brazil's internationals yet he has got himself a visa.

With the influx of more skilful foreign players it makes no sense to me that the English lads haven't improved as a result of playing with and against better players week in week out 
Why do players like Walcott for instance look so inept when he's a really useful player for arsenal?

Maybe its because he doesn't get as much grief from Arsenal fans?

Thought it was a poor performance from both teams. Bit like the recent Scum V Chelsea game where both teams priority was not to lose 
Gotta say I would have taken 0-0 b4 the hgame though

Not saying we have great players but remember Rooney Sturridge Welbeck Oxlade C, Carroll, Glen Johnson were all out for this game and there are a couple of good youngsters like Townsend, Barkeley & Caulker coming through.

Agree about Wilshere. FFS stop building him up to be something he's not. Put him back in the U21s & give him some experience there. He looked completely out of his depth last night & that's saying something with some of the performances  

Also agree on the foreign players. We wont ever win anything whilst we have the majority of the top teams playing with anything from 7-11 foreigners in the side

Totally agree with TMG.  It seems we will never set the world on fire but so many strikers out with injuries.  Roy needs to change it up a bit too though - he does play favourites when we can all see that others need a chance - case in point - Lambert.  He's obviously not world class but with the right partners - he can get the goals and some of his assists have been excellent.  All valid points about the system though - too many foreign players - in the Prem - but it's all about winning anymore and MONEY - the game is not like it used to be.  Look at the team of 1966 - that will never happen again unless there are major changes about English born quotas.